Tim Russell: These are the good years for Barb and me. The Vikings didn't make the playoffs and that means lower blood pressure for me and my alcohol consumption is way down. Barb discovered a new church, the Masonites, which teach you how to meditate in your sleep. And we were looking for a cockroach who disappeared under the living room rug and we had to move the furniture around and we discovered that by moving the couch so it faces the fireplace and putting the love seat against the window and the big chair facing south  suddenly everything clicked. We felt a sense of calm and joy. We should've been happy. And then one night I woke up and found Barb in the living room, weeping. (SS NOSE BLOW)  What is it, honey? What's wrong? It's three o'clock in the morning.

Sue Scott (WEEPY): Regret doesn't keep regular hours, Jim. I was awakened by a sense of having wasted the best years of my life.

TR: What? How?

SS: All those years, we've been living with the wrong furniture arrangement.

TR: Oh honey

SS: There is such a thing as feng shooey.

TR: I think it's pronounced feng shway.

SS: And then I tuned in the home shopping channel and there was a $750 diamond ring for only $19.95, plus shipping and handling, and I called up to order it, and they're all out. If only I'd called a minute earlier.

TR: Barb, regret gets you nowhere. You have to live your life as it comes. You can't change the past.

SS: Jim

TR: What?

SS: You've been talking to Rhonda again in your sleep.

TR: Oh oh

SS: You were trying to get her to go to Guatelama with you, Jim.

TR: I was?

SS: Your old girlfriend. You've never forgotten her.

TR: I never think about Rhonda.

SS: At night you do. You tell her how beautiful she is and how you're so glad she likes that negligee.

TR: I'm astonished, Barb.

SS: Oh? Think how I feel. And then you put your arms around me and you whisper her name in my ear. Think about that for a minute.

TR: You know, in all the rush of the holiday season, I think I've been falling behind on my ketchup consumption.

SS: I think so, Jim. Ketchup has natural mellowing agents that make a person accept who you are and what your life is and not try to find solutions by rewriting the past.

TR: You're right, of course.

SS: Of course I am.

Rich Dworsky (SINGS): Here's to the New Year….and the joys it will contain
Two-thousand six is coming….on the Midnight Train.
Life is flowing like ketchup in champagne.

Lovingly selected from the earliest archives of A Prairie Home Companion, this heirloom collection represents the music from earliest years of the now legendary show: 1974–1976. With songs and tunes from jazz pianist Butch Thompson, mandolin maestro Peter Ostroushko, Dakota Dave Hull and the first house band, The Powdermilk Biscuit Band (Adam Granger, Bob Douglas and Mary DuShane).